PURIFIED
- UnstoppableRevKev
- Oct 6
- 3 min read
📖Scripture:
“Having purified your souls by obedience to the truth unto sincere brotherly love, love one another fervently out of a pure heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God!” 1 Peter 1:22-23
🔎Examination:
In 1 Peter 1:22, the Greek participle hēgnikotes (ἡγνικότες, Strong’s G48) — “having purified” — is in the perfect tense and active voice. Peter’s inspired grammar tells us the saints’ purification is a completed act in the past with continuing results in the present. The perfect tense implies permanence: the soul has been decisively cleansed and remains in that state because the action’s effects endure. Yet it is active — not something passively received, but a state that evidences itself through ongoing obedience.
What does Peter mean by being “having purified your souls by obedience to the truth”? Not moral self-improvement, not emotional sincerity, and certainly not ritual observance. The word “truth” (alētheia, G225) in Johannine and Petrine contexts refers not to subjective conviction but to the objective revelation of God in Christ. Jesus declared, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Thus obedience to “the Truth” means submission to the incarnate Word and His revealed written Word.
Scripture repeatedly links sanctification with the Word: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth” (John 17:17). The verb “sanctify” (hagiazō, G37) shares its root with hēgnikotes. Purification of the soul is effected through God’s Word received in submissive obedience. James 1:21–25 echoes this: “Receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls… be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.”
Notice the divine order: the Word implants, convicts, regenerates, and compels obedience. This obedience is not meritorious but evidentiary — fruit revealing the root of regeneration. To claim purification without obedience is to claim fire without heat.
Here, Peter rebukes two enduring heresies. First, Antinomianism, the notion that grace cancels the moral law, making obedience optional. This lie undergirds much of modern “easy-believism.” Scripture refutes it: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!” (Romans 6:1–2). Second, Sacramentalism, whether Roman or pseudo-Protestant, which imagines purification is conferred by outward rites — baptism, confirmation, Eucharist — apart from the inner obedience of faith. Peter’s context destroys that superstition: the purification is through obedience to the truth, not through ceremony or ecclesiastical mediation.
True obedience flows from the new heart promised in Ezekiel 36:26–27: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes.” The Holy Spirit (not human effort) is the efficient cause of this obedience, working through the instrument of the Word. Therefore, any claim to spirituality divorced from Scripture is counterfeit. When modern movements (Bethel, Hillsong, the NAR) exalt subjective “revelations” above the written Word, they mimic the serpent’s ancient whisper, “Did God really say?” They invent “new truth,” denying that the canon is closed and sufficient.
The purification Peter speaks of is inseparable from repentance and submission to the authoritative Word of God. It produces discernible transformation: renouncing malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander (1 Peter 2:1). As the Psalmist says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word” (Psalm 119:9).
To be purified is not to become sinless but to be set apart unto God, cleansed from allegiance to self and the world. The passive counterfeit of Western religion seeks emotional reassurance without moral renovation; the biblical gospel creates moral renovation because God Himself indwells the purified.
Thus, “having purified your souls by obedience to the truth” is Peter’s way of saying: if there is no present obedience, there never was purification. Obedience is not the ladder we climb to reach salvation; it is the evidence we’ve been born again, regenerated, and resurrected in Christ (see v.23)!
🤺Action:
Examine whether your obedience springs from affection for Christ or from habit, fear, or cultural expectation (2 Cor 13:5).
Identify any area where your “truth” has become subjective or self-defined; submit it again to the objective Word.
Replace passive religious attendance with active partnership in the gospel (Phil 1:5).
🧠Reflection:
Bring before God the question: “Is my soul purified — not merely reformed, but reborn through obedience to the Truth?” Ask the Holy Spirit to expose any false assurances or self-made definitions of holiness, and to renew in you a hunger to obey Christ’s revealed Word as the evidence of a purified soul.
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Blessings & love,
Kevin M. Kelley
Pastor
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